AFP: Five people died and dozens were hurt when a huge wildfire swept through several villages in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey overnight, the health minister said on Friday.
Hundreds of animals also perished in the blaze, local residents said. An AFP correspondent saw many of their bodies lying on the ground. Dramatic overnight images on social media showed flames raging over a large area, lighting up the night sky.
By the morning they had left huge areas of charred and blackened land in two areas of Diyarbakir and Mardin provinces.
“Five people died and 44 were injured, 10 seriously,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca wrote on X. Seven emergency teams and 35 ambulances went to the scene, he said. Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party gave a higher toll. It said on X there were “seven dead” and criticised the government’s intervention as “late and insufficient”.
During the night, DEM had urged the government to send water bombers, saying fighting the blaze from the ground was “not enough”. An AFP reporter in Koksalan village in Diyarbakir province saw around 100 animals lying dead on the ground.